Almost blindly, she unfastened her shoes and slipped them off. She wished she’d brought Clara for the purpose, since a few other ladies seemed to have maids with them.
“Lady Daxton,” someone greeted her as she donned her new dancing slippers.
Jerking her head up, she recognized young Lady Wickenden, whose face was just as kind and friendly as yesterday.
Willa returned the greeting with relief.
“Do you know Mrs. Grant?” Lady Wickenden inquired, drawing forward an astonishingly beautiful young woman with jet-black hair, wearing a gown of dusky pink gauze.
“How do you do?” Willa murmured, hoping she didn’t sound awkward.
“I have been hoping to meet you,” Mrs. Grant said. “I’m acquainted with your husband.”
She was sure Dax would make it his business to be acquainted with anyone as lovely as Mrs. Grant. It was a lowering thought, for she could not compete.
“And your aunt,” Mrs. Grant added.
“Oh dear,” Willa said before she could help it. She would be ostracized utterly by Blackhaven society.
To her surprised, Mrs. Grant’s eyes danced. Nor did her amusement appear to be malicious. “Welcome to Blackhaven. Don’t be daunted. Everyone likes to know everyone else’s business, but they are good people, like Gillie here, who is a native.”
“And you are not?” Willa managed.
“Lord, no, I just married the vicar,” said the surprising Mrs. Grant.
Although both Lady Wickenden and Mrs. Grant seemed ready to leave the cloakroom, they waited for her to put her dancing slippers on and walked out on either side of her.
Dax waited where he’d left her, although he’d been joined by Lord Wickenden. Just as Willa had expected, her husband broke into smiles as he saw Mrs. Grant.
“Dax, you reprobate,” she greeted him, giving him her hand. “Do you have to set society by the ears in every town?”
“Only if society has got nothing better to do that pay me any attention,” Dax said, bowing over her hand. “Do you know, you’re more beautiful than ever? The sticks must agree with you.” He dropped her hand as a modestly dressed but very good-looking man hurried through the front doors and came straight toward them. “Is this your vicar?” he asked outrageously.
“Yes,” Mrs. Grant said, quite unoffended as she took her husband’s arm with quite natural affection. “This is my vicar, Tristram Grant. Tris, Lord and Lady Daxton.”
Mr. Grant might have been expected to look somewhat askance at Daxton for any number of reasons, not least of them the friendliness of the acknowledged rake with his wife, but he merely shook hands with perfect courtesy and congratulated Daxton on his marriage before requesting a dance of Willa.
“Get in line, Grant,” Wickenden drawled. And by the time they reached the ballroom door, Willa had promised a dance to each.
“You’ll be fine, now,” Mrs. Grant murmured. “Wickenden for cachet and Tristram for respectability. Of a sort! Just enjoy yourself.”
And before she could recover from the astonishment of that, her hand was once again on Daxton’s arm and they were being formally announced at the door.
Although the music didn’t stop, the noise dropped markedly as everyone turned to stare at the runaway couple.
Instinctively, Willa lifted her chin in defiance.
“That’s the girl,” Dax breathed. “Let ’em look.”
For whatever reason, Daxton’s friends seemed to have decided to look after her. They all sat together, sipping champagne until Mr. Grant claimed his dance with Willa. At the same time, Dax stood up with Lady Wickenden, although he winked encouragingly at his wife.
“You’ll forgive me if I step on your toes?” Willa said earnestly to Mr. Grant. “Oh, and please just drag me back if I go in the wrong direction. I’m not used to dancing.”
Mr. Grant looked amused. “I think I’d rather just go with you and see if everyone else follows. You’ll be credited with a new dance.”
Willa couldn’t help laughing, and in fact, the unusual vicar was so entertaining that she forgot to be anxious and simply enjoyed his company.
And from then, it seemed, her social success was assured. Daxton, Lady Wickenden, and Mrs. Grant were all besieged for introductions to her and her dance card was quickly filled, all but the two waltzes of the evening, which she had kept for Dax.
For a time, Dax watched her success with an air of pride. Then, as if reassured she didn’t need him, he sauntered off to the card room. He hadn’t emerged by the time Lord Tamar strolled into the ballroom and swerved almost immediately in Willa’s direction.
At the time, she sat with the amiable Lady Wickenden enjoying a rare moment of rest and trying not to be disappointed that Dax was late for their dance. For the orchestra had just struck up the strains of a waltz, and couples were taking to the floor.
Lord Tamar, who appeared to be wearing the same worn coat as before, without any of the niceties of evening wear, greeted the ladies in his unconventional way, and asked Lady Wickenden if she would mind very much being deprived of her companion during the waltz.
“If Lady Dax will dance with me, that is,” he added with his engaging smile.
“You’re very kind,” Willa said gratefully, “but I have promised the waltz to Dax.”
“Oh no,” Tamar said in shocked tones. “Even I know you don’t dance with your own husband! Tell her, Lady Wickenden. Besides…” He looked around him ostentatiously. “I don’t see him.”
“Tamar,” Lady Wickenden said quietly, but at that moment her husband appeared, distracting her with a glass of lemonade.
Another glance toward the card room door convinced Willa that Dax was not coming. Well, she would not sit there pining stupidly. Dax would be the last man to expect it. In fact, he would quickly find her clinging annoying. Besides which, Tamar was his old friend, and Willa rather liked him.
She stood up. “Very well then.”
Grant for respectability and Wickenden for cachet, she remembered. And Tamar for a hint of social recklessness. But then, a woman just married by elopement to Lord Daxton must surely be regarded already as just about as reckless as it was possible to be.
“You must talk Dax into letting me paint you both,” Tamar said as they danced, his intense eyes scanning her face. “The portrait will be my wedding gift to you.”
“That would be very kind of you, especially considering you haven’t seen him for so long. I’m not sure a gift is required.”
“Oh, it is,” he assured her. “We were very thick together at school.”
“I imagine the pair of you got up to all sorts of mischief.”
He grinned reminiscently. “Oh, we did. We even managed to escape and play with the town lads at night. Made friends with them after a couple of fights…. Used to row across to Windsor sometimes, too, in secret. Then there were the cows… But there, I won’t bore you.”
“Oh, I’m not remotely bored,” she assured him. “Tell me more.” For the rest of the dance, he entertained her with tales of their adventures and troubles at school, how they’d got the better of older boys through cunning and sticking together, and punishments they’d taken for breaking the rules. He told it all in a very amusing style so that she couldn’t help laughing and yet she sensed a certain sadness behind the light words.
“You must have missed each other when you left.”
Tamar gave a lopsided smile. “Well, I missed him for a bit. But there you are. Typical of the old man to die so inconveniently. Didn’t you know Dax as a child, too?”
“Yes, a little. I lived with my aunt, Lady Shelby. We spent summers and Christmastides at Gore Park, which marches with Dacre Abbey land, so we all spent a lot of time together.”
The dance came to a close and she sank into a curtsey.
Tamar bowed in return, and placed her hand in his arm. “And now I believe it’s supper. Was that not well-planned of me?”
“Yes, it was,” said Dax cheerfully, seeming to mater
ialize on her other side. “I’ve found us all a table in the dining room. Lady Wickenden is defending it from all comers. Did he stand on your toes?”
“No,” Willa replied. “More amazingly, neither did I stand on his.”
“I believe I saved her from a fate worse than death,” Tamar said provokingly. “Dancing with her own husband.”
“How very brave of you to step in,” Dax said. He was clearly bantering, and yet beneath that, Willa sensed he wasn’t quite pleased.
But Tamar was suddenly distracted. “Lord, Dax, do you remember our duel at school?”
Dax grinned, any ill-nature apparently forgotten. “Dawn in the dorm, with swords. Well, carved sticks with sharpened points.”
“They were lethal, looking back. It’s as well we were rumbled, and old Sour Face stopped it.”
“I don’t know, I was about to stab you in the sword arm.”
“You did stab me in the sword arm. I’ve still got the scar.”
“I’ve got one in my side I owe to you,” Dax recalled. “We were pretty evenly matched in those days.”
“Well, I gather you’ve surpassed me in affairs of honor since then.”
“It’s not the same with pistols,” Dax said carelessly. “It’s over too quickly.” He glanced down at Willa’s no-doubt appalled expression, and nudged her with his elbow. “It’s just nonsense,” he said, a little too quickly. “Don’t take us seriously.”
*
Watching his cousin Willa go into supper surrounded by fashionable and titled people, all of whom seemed to be making a quite unnecessary fuss over her, Sir Ralph Shelby felt more outraged than ever. She had run away, with Daxton, the most infamous rake in the country.
Admittedly, Daxton had taken him by surprise by actually marrying Willa, but nevertheless, respectable people should have shunned her. Instead, Wickenden himself, quite a leader of London society, had danced with her. Lady Wickenden and even the damned vicar’s wife, seemed to have made a friend of her. Of course the vicar’s wife was the notorious Kate Crowmore, so one could expect no better of her!
But still, somehow, his scheming little minx of a penniless cousin had turned her disgrace into a shining social success, one that even his mother’s missing purse had done little to tarnish. Yet…
The purse, of course, was another grudge, for although it was Haines who had managed to lose it, he found it easier to blame Willa and Daxton for the whole sorry mess.
“Your pardon, sir,” said a tiny voice at his side. “May I pass?”
Instinctively, Ralph stepped back and found a small, rather mousy young lady smiling timorously. “Thank you. I lost my brother in the crush and I think he must have gone into supper without me.”
She touched her hair nervously as she hurried past, and the bright candle light glinted off a large, diamond bracelet on her wrist. Mousy and wealthy, he judged, just as his lost heiress, the Duke of Kelburn’s daughter, had been reputed to be.
“One moment, ma’am,” he said, hastily stepping after her. “Let me help you find your brother. It is quite daunting to enter such a crowded place alone. My name is Shelby. Sir Ralph Shelby, at your service.”
“How do you do, sir?” she twittered. “I’m Lydia Tranter. Perhaps you know my brother? Robert Tranter?”
“I shall find him for you,” Ralph soothed as he conducted her onward in gentlemanly fashion. “Do you live in Blackhaven?”
“Oh no, we have brought our mother here for her health, but it is a charming place, is it not? And informal, so different from what I’ve been used to…”
“And what is it you are used to?” Ralph inquired pleasantly.
“Oh, you know what is like with old names and large, established houses, all tradition and uncomfortable formality…”
“Tell me more,” Ralph said. At last, it seemed, his luck was turning.
*
With her husband once more at her side, Willa found supper the most fun of all. Growing in confidence, she relaxed and joined in the quick-witted banter that flew back and forth across the table, and not just among the men. She found she liked both Lady Wickenden and Mrs. Grant, who were nothing at all like the ladies who called on her aunt and cousins.
“You and Dax must come to dinner at the vicarage tomorrow evening,” Mrs. Grant said idly as they walked together back to the main ballroom.
“Thank you,” Willa said in some surprise. She cast a slightly shy smile at the other woman. “You and Lady Wickenden are being very kind to me.”
“Oh, Gillie’s kind to everyone.”
“And you are not?”
Mrs. Grant’s lips twisted slightly. After a moment, she said, “Unhappy people are often unkind through carelessness. Through concentrating too much on their own unhappiness and not enough on those around them.”
Willa regarded her more closely. “Are you talking about yourself?” she asked bluntly. “Or Dax?”
Since they entered the ballroom, Mrs. Grant had a good excuse not to answer. In truth, Willa wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but perversely, she pursued the issue.
“Do you imagine Dax is unkind to me?” she blurted.
“Well, marrying you at the border is a somewhat scandalous start to a marriage. To some. I was married by special license myself, so I can say nothing against it.”
“You feel sorry for me.” It was a bit of a jolt. She’d imagined they were almost friends, that the other women liked her.
“Oh goodness, I feel sorry for everyone who is a pawn in marriage.”
“Pawn?” Willa repeated indignantly. But, of course, she was. She was Dax’s means to his inheritance and she was pretty sure Mrs. Grant knew that, too. “Dax is not the only one who benefits from the marriage, you know. My life was not—” She broke off, appalled at saying so much.
Mrs. Grant sat down, catching Willa’s hand to draw her into the next chair. “Not very tolerable,” she guessed. “I can see that. And I know it’s none of my business. You and Dax seem to understand each other better than I’d hoped. I like Dax, but no one could call him stable. Perhaps you’re just what he needs, but… Equally, you’ve lived a sheltered life and you may not be entirely aware of what you’ve taken on as his wife. Don’t look like that, Willa, I’m not insulting you or him. I just want you to know you have friends. Please don’t cut me, and please do come to dinner.”
Willa couldn’t help laughing at Mrs. Grant’s comical expression, and she was aware her initial umbrage was not deserved. Mrs. Grant was right. She was very hazy on Dax’s misdeeds and exactly what constituted a rakehell.
She had married a charming rake on impulse, in the hope that she could win his love and save him from his dangerously ruinous lifestyle. But she should be prepared for that never to happen. It was at least as likely—more likely—that she would have to live in unhappiness and hide it from him, from everyone.
“To the devil with fashion,” Dax said, standing before her with his hand held out. “Will you dance with me, new wife?”
She took his hand and stood. “I believe I will, new husband.”
She did it largely for Kate Grant’s benefit. But as they walked across the room to the opening strains of the waltz, she said, “Is it really not acceptable for married couples to dance together?”
“I’m told not. Except at wedding parties, of course, and we haven’t yet had one of those, so perhaps no one will ostracize us.”
“Ostracize!” Willa repeated, startled.
Dax laughed. “I was joking. Laugh at us might be more appropriate.”
“We don’t have to dance,” she said reluctantly.
He paused. “It’s up to you. Personally, I don’t care who sniggers, or who even notices, and I want to dance with you. But I’m happy to do anything else you wish instead.”
She met his gaze, curiously. “I don’t remember you being this accommodating.”
“I’m not. I’m a selfish bas—I’m selfish.”
She smiled and began to walk again. “Then I would
love to dance.”
He laughed. “I’ve never been rewarded for selfishness before.”
“I doubt that’s true. You just haven’t noticed.”
“Ouch.”
“Oh, I wasn’t criticizing,” she assured him as they arrived on the floor, and he whisked her into the dance.
“I know,” he said ruefully. “You are quite wonderful, aren’t you, Willa Blake?”
The new flush to her cheeks might have been due to the sudden exertion of the dance. “I don’t see why,” she muttered.
“It might be something to do with the way your eyes laugh,” he mused. “Or perhaps the dimple.”
“What dimple?”
“I can’t show you here. People would definitely talk. But I like that I can still see my fun little friend in the beautiful woman you are tonight.”
She tore her gaze from his, to stare instead at the buttons of his coat. “I suppose that is flattery. You don’t need to say such things to me, Dax.”
“Then what shall I say to you?” he asked softly, and it came to her at last, belatedly, that he was flirting with her.
Her gaze widened as it returned to his. “You could tell me exactly what a rakehell is,” she said breathlessly.
A shout of laughter escaped him, causing several curious heads to turn in their direction. Dax didn’t appear to notice, merely swung her around with a trifle too much exuberance.
“I suppose he’s a fellow who kicks up a lot of trouble,” he said. “Drinking, gambling, that kind of thing.”
“All gentlemen do those things, don’t they?”
“True. Rakehells just take them to extremes, usually in low dens rather than respectable establishments.”
“And get into fights?”
“Frequently.”
“Duels?” she hazarded.
“Occasionally.”
“Womanizing?”
“Are we talking about me or rakehells in general?”
“I’m not perfectly sure,” she confessed. “I’m just trying to understand what your life is like.”
“Hectic and hedonistic,” he said flippantly. “Which is why I married you.”
“Well, it’s very kind of you to say so.”
The Wicked Husband Page 9